Asus G20CB-DH73-GTX1080 Gaming Desktop Review

By Tech For Pennies

April 12, 2017

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The golden age of desktops was over fifteen years ago. Nowadays, it’s more about niche markets. Markets such as gaming rigs. With everything going mobile, it is still hard to get same the performance from laptop than desktop when it comes to gaming. Indeed, one of the player-friendly desktops of 2017 is Asus G20CB-DH73-GTX1080. Its specs and design look marvelous, but the high price might lower many’s desire to buy the Asus. Well, let me tell you below what I think about the desktop and whether it’s worth the price or not…

Design in nutshell

The first thing you notice about Asus G20CB-DH73-GTX1080, it is darn small unit. The desktop is just about fourteen inches tall and deep, and four inches wide. This is one of the advantages over conventional gaming computers – if you are low on space, fitting the slim Asus in your room should not be a problem.

The case has LED lights that synchronize to music and flash accordingly. That being said, you can turn off those lights if you find them disturbing.

On idle state, the noise level is at 22dB which is quieter than a whisper.

How good is this for gamers?

Asus G20CB-DH73-GTX1080 is among the best desktops for gamers. The reason you might have already guessed: the top-notch GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card with 8GB video RAM. There is currently no engine that matches its performance (except the Ti version of the same card), so you should not be doubtful about frame rates. On 4K resolution, a few examples include:

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Smooth frame rates as you can see, even on these demanding titles. Thanks to the heavyweight graphics card you won’t need another desktop for years. The GTX 1080 is also VR, Virtual Reality, ready. One thing you might want to know, the mainboard doesn’t have extra PCI-e x16 slots so installing a second graphics card is not possible.

Video

Performance in general

Everything about Asus G20CB-DH73-GTX1080 was designed with performance first. Even the storage drive setup is excellent: two drives are installed, a 1TB 7200RPM hard drive and 512GB M.2 PCIx4 solid-state drive. What is more, the operating system is cleverly put to the SSD part, meaning Windows will start and operate darn quick. The hard drive is empty so you have a full terabyte for your files and games.

Intel Core i7-6700 is a 6th generation (Skylake) processor that is commanding this desktop. It is not the latest Kaby Lake architecture, but still this 2015 model offers all the goodies: four cores, high 3.4GHz clock speed and turbo boost of 4.0GHz. The i7-6700 beats many other desktop processors with its ~10000 points score in CPU Mark. This translates to smooth gaming, Photoshop and video editing experience, to name a few uses this computer is good for.

This model in question is equipped with DDR4 (2133MHz) RAM, 16 gigabytes installed. You rarely need more as 16GB takes care of the needs of gamers and power users, easily. You can however go as high as 32 gigabytes if you want as the motherboard contains two memory slots. I can’t say if the current RAM comes on one or two sticks.

Ports and connections

Well, Asus G20CB-DH73-GTX1080 is not the biggest desktop around, but it still does have rather good connectivity. The only thing that is missing, is the new USB Type-C port. But there are many normal USB connectors to make up for this: two USB 2.0, four USB 3.0 and two USB 3.1 all in all. To those, you’ll connect your gaming mouse, keyboard and other peripherals like USB drives.

The GTX 1080 graphics card has plenty of video outputs: two HDMI (4K), two DP and one DVI. You can connect up to three monitors at the same time, if you are into multi-screen stuff. If you just have one display you probably want to use the HDMI output.

Don’t want any disturbances with Internet connection? Utilize the desktop’s Gigabit RJ-45 port for networking. In addition, the computer also sports a 802.11ac wireless adapter – and yes, the AC standard offers very long range with high transfer rates. Bluetooth 4.0 is supported, too.

Despite being small, there is a 24X slimline DVD burner available on this unit. So you can still install games the old-school way, from discs.

Miscellaneous features and benefits

Wired keyboard and mouse are included on Asus G20CB-DH73-GTX1080. But even though it’s a pricey model, monitor is unfortunately not.

The operating system is Windows 10 Home (64-bit), and as said above, it is installed on the SSD.

The power supply consists of 230W and 180W parts, totaling at 410W.

Summing it up

Asus G20CB-DH73-GTX1080 makes a decent gaming desktop for people concerned about size, style and performance. Finding space for this computer in your room is not a problem at all, but the compact design does not interfere with gaming performance. The GeForce GTX 1080 is a top graphics engine of 2017 and pretty much all games, regardless of resolution and settings, will spit only smooth frame rates! If I was to complain about some feature, it would be the missing USB Type-C / Thunderbolt port: only regular USB connectors are available. Nonetheless, the Asus is a very powerful unit, lasting for 2-3 years easily in gaming use – considering all that, I say it is worth the money as a long-term investment!